I agree, if you’re dragging/dropping links/images into a markdown aware editor, it should encode those. But since the whole purpose of Markdown/CommonMark is to be able to write using any text editor, you can’t rely on the editor doing it for you.
I would also argue that the usage of Markdown for documents that are not intended to live on the internet is important, from writing your next book and including image/figures, to journaling, taking business notes, etc.
Again, I’m not crazy about the pointy bracket syntax, but I think it provides a valid solution to those who want to use a plaintext editor and reference a local file.
